Tài liệu Facial Expressions in Hollywood''''s Portrayal of Emotion ppt

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

1997, Vol. 72, No. I, 164-176

Copyright 1997 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

OO22-35I4/97/J3.OO

Facial Expressions in Hollywood's Portrayal of Emotion

James M. Carroll and James A. Russell

University of British Columbia

Much theory and research on emotion are based on the facial expressions of amateurs asked to pose

for still photographs. The theory of facial affect programs (FAPs; P. Ekman, 1972) was proposed

to account for the resulting expressions, most of which are patterns consisting of distinguishable

parts. In the present study, 4 Hollywood films noted for fine acting and realism were examined for

the facial expressions that accompany a basic emotion. In keeping with the theory of FAPs, profes￾sional actors judged as happy were found smiling in 97% (Duchenne smiling in 74%) of cases. In

contrast, actors judged as surprised, afraid, angry, disgusted, or sad rarely showed the predicted

pattern (found in 0 to 31% of cases). Typically, they used one or two parts from the full pattern. If

these films represent real life, these findings favor a theory that assumes separable parts (e.g.,

components theory) over the older theory of FAPs.

Lazarus (1980) wrote, * The conduct of our affairs is heavily

determined by how we interpret the thoughts and feelings of

others. .. . By watching the faces of others in action, we can

to some extent know how they feel. . . . Even if the expres￾sion is modified or disguised, there will be telltale signs" (pp.

vii—viii).

Specific facial patterns have been theorized to be biologically

hardwired signals that allow one person to know the emotion

of another. Izard (1971), Ekman and Friesen (1975, 1976), and

Matsumoto and Ekman (1988) have published now familiar

portraits of the facial expressions they hypothesize occur for

happiness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness (the so￾called basic emotions). An example of the kind of pattern hy￾pothesized is shown in Figure 1. Shown such expressions, ob￾servers from New York to New Guinea, including members of

a nearly Stone Age culture, were claimed to recognize the emo￾tions expressed (Ekman & Friesen, 1971; Ekman, Sorenson, &

Friesen, 1969; Izard, 1971). According to Ekman (1980), it

therefore follows that "when someone feels an emotion and is

not trying to disguise it, his or her face appears the same no

matter who that person is or where he or she comes from"

(p. 7).

But does this inference follow? Do the recognition studies

James M. Carroll and James A. Russell, Department of Psychology,

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

This study was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Hu￾manities Research Council of Canada.

We thank Deborah von Lipinski and Lorraine Russell for providing

the photographs used in this article; Anuradha Chawla, Christine Lilly,

and Bruce McMurtry for their help in gathering and analyzing the data

reported; and Andrea Bull and Lisa Ferguson for their helpful editorial

comments. We thank Pierre Gosselin for providing us with extensive

reanalyses of his data and for insightful comments on a draft of this

article.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to James

A. Russell, Department of Psychology, 2136 West Mall, University of

British Columbia, Vancouver British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z4. Elec￾tronic mail may be sent via the Internet to [email protected].

(even assuming they are valid) tell us what facial expressions

actually occur in New "Vbrk, in New Guinea, or in other scenes

from everyday life? Most of the recognition studies were con￾ducted with highly artificial materials. Often the facial stimuli

were still photographs of amateurs asked to portray single emo￾tions for the camera. In these experiments, the process whereby

one person expresses emotion to another was guided by the

experimenter to a degree that raises questions of generalizability

to the nonexperimental world. To be sure, artificial procedures

and materials have their place. Nevertheless, they do not neces￾sarily tell us what occurs in ordinary life.

A more ecological perspective on facial expressions raises

the following kinds of unanswered questions:

1. What is the natural response of observers to the facial

expressions of others? How often do they interpret facial expres￾sions in terms of single, basic emotions? What other interpreta￾tions of facial expressions are made? In everyday circumstances,

might the woman of Figure 1 be thought frustrated, over￾wrought, or histrionic rather than simply angry?

2. What facial behaviors actually occur in everyday life, in

what intensities, durations, configurations, and frequencies? For

example, how often do the specific facial configurations por￾trayed by Izard, Ekman, and their colleagues actually occur?

Their research and theorizing are largely limited to a small

number of facial configurations relative to all possible combina￾tions of muscle contractions of which the face is capable. Which

configurations actually occur under various emotion-eliciting

circumstances? When one person does attribute a single basic

emotion to another, what facial information, if any, was that

attribution typically based on? For example, in all the occasions

in which Debbie is seen by her friends as angry, how often does

her face look like that shown in Figure 1?

In this article, we begin to explore the second set of questions.

We offer evidence that everyday life might be rather different

from what is implied by Izard's (1971) and Ekman's (1972,

1975) accounts. When observers attribute happiness to Debbie,

she is very likely smiling. On the other hand, when observers

attribute anger, surprise, fear, disgust, or sadness to her, she is

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